How to counter the Landlord Lobby and ensure good housing for all

The Landlord Lobby in Scotland has a single threat that they use to hammer every policy nail that might affect them. “We’ll sell up and it’ll reduce the supply of rental housing”.

Threaten them with a wealth tax? - “We’ll sell up”.

Force them to cap rent rises to only slightly above inflation? - “We’ll sell up”

Call for tenants to get only some of the rights enjoyed by tenants in Europe? - “We’ll sell up”.

Or, as reported today in The Herald, ask landlords to not rent out cold, damp, mouldy homes at some point within the next decade? - “We’ll sell up”.

It’s time to start reforming the private rented sector to defang this kind of politicking.

For a start, houses that are currently operated as private lets should be made very difficult to sell on an owner-occupied basis. The major exception should be that the currently sitting tenant should have a first right of refusal to purchase said property. This would need to be coupled with some kind of stable finance in place as many in the private sector are there because they are unable to save a deposit for a conventional mortgage - often because their monthly rent is two or three times what it would cost to service said mortgage.

If the tenant does not wish to purchase the property then it must be sold on a “for let” basis and with the sitting tenant in place - at all times, the right to a stable home environment must exceed the right to profit from property sales. This is common in many places in Europe and in several it would be an unthinkable scandal to make someone homeless just because you don’t want to be a landlord any more.

Of course, this may result in swapping one private landlord for another but if we want to start truly transforming the rented housing sector and returning it to something like it was prior to the profiteering landscape created during the Thatcher years, then we need to give Councils and Housing Associations the power and ability to step in too. Scotland has started making inroads into these bodies purchasing homes to increase the social rented pool and this could be encouraged and accelerated. If the tenant does not wish to purchase the home and Councils do, this should be the next step. Again, the tenant should be kept in place and even offered an indefinite tenancy at Social Housing rates for as long as they wish to stay there.

This second part of the plan does come with some risk and liability for the Council though. If the landlord truly is selling up because they can’t be bothered to maintain and retrofit their housing portfolio to a minimally adequate standard then it may result in the Council having to take on that financial burden. Any Council purchase price must be discounted from the “market rate” by at least the cost to repair and retrofit the property.

If the Scottish Government had adopted our plan (passed unanimously at the SNP’s 2018 conference but dismissed by the Government in 2021) to launch a Scottish National Infrastructure Company and a National Housing Company, these bodies would now step in to do the actual retrofits (rather than outsourcing to a private contractor who’ll just hive off inordinate levels of profit themselves) and if we do it on a mass scale, then this project can benefit from the economies of that scale to reduce the costs and increase quality.

If landlords try to avoid this happening to the houses they own by evicting their tenants and keeping the houses vacant, then their property taxes (either the current Council Tax or our Property Tax) should be surcharged to the point of making that impractical.

Ultimately, the solution to the private rented sector is to deprioritise it as housing strategy. Our blueprint Good Houses For All would result in social housing becoming once again the first option for most people who need a house and would deliver better and cheaper housing than the private rented sector can.

Houses should be a place to live in rather than an asset to profit from. Once we’ve agreed that principle, we can start making them better for all of us.